5 Ideas that will make your life Better
Here are 5 Ideas that will make your life better – they certainly greatly improved mine! Try all, or just some of them, for a period and see if they have the same positive impact on you life as they have on mine.
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TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR EVERYTHING IN YOUR LIFE.
I’ve talked about this before, but it is very much worth saying again. One of the best things I life in my life was to start being responsible for everything in it -All of it!
This doesn’t mean I get to control every event that occurs around me, of course, but it does mean that I get to control my reactions and emotions.
Controlling those elements means I control my experience. I am responsible for how I deal with everything that happens. I am responsible for my own happiness and well-being.
Taking 100% responsibility for your life means that you have to give up all your excuses on why your life isn’t the way you want it to be. It means giving up blaming other people for your lack of success or how you feel. It means giving up complaining.
Also, taking responsibility for everything in your life doesn’t mean you are to blame for everything – it just means it’s up to you and you alone in what you do with what life has given you and how you choose to view it.
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STOP PRETENDING YOU KNOW EVERYTHING ALREADY.
This one took me a long while to learn but when I got it, it reduced a lot of the anxiety and stress in my life, particularly my professional life.
Back when I was working as a sound engineer, the band I worked with would play in a lot of different venues around the country and I would have to use a lot of different equipment set ups. I felt that as I was being paid to be a Sound Engineer then I was expected to know everything about all these diverse set ups.
So, I would just pretended I did, and struggle to work it all out as I went along. Largely this worked out for me, but sometimes it just didn’t, and when it didn’t I would be put myself under huge amounts of stress and anxiety trying to get things to work.
One night I got talking to another Sound Engineer, who did much bigger events than I did, and he told me that no one has a clue about all these different systems. It just wasn’t possible to know it all. The difference between him and me was that he was up front about it and didn’t mind asking for help. He felt no shame in it.
As soon as I started to ask people about stuff that I wasn’t sure of, you cannot believe how much knowledge I received, and quickly too.
Once I got past my vanity of having to be seen to know everything and my shame for not knowing it, I moved into a “Always learning” mindset. Not only did I become much better at my job, I also dropped most of the stress too.
Now I approach everything like this.
As much as possible I try to speak up when I don’t know something and ask for clarification or explanation. It may be slightly embarrassing to ask, but you only have that experience once. From then on you have the knowledge and you will never be in the situation of not knowing again.
This goes for all areas of my life, not just any professional stuff. It extends to me stopping lying about books I have read, films I have seen, using words I don’t know the full meaning of, or any sort of stuff where I was pretending to know something I didn’t.
Try it and you’ll see the benefits quickly.
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LEARN FROM OTHERS BY LISTENING MORE THAN YOU TALK
We have all come across the saying that when most people are seemingly listening to you, they are in fact, just waiting for their turn to talk. To a large extent this is seems to be true and we’re all guilty of it, it’s not just other people!
Something struck me one day while I was talking to someone. I was telling them all about my opinion on whatever the subject was, and I wasn’t really letting them tell me theirs.
Then an idea popped into my head: “I already know what my opinion is about this subject, I’m not going to learn anything new by repeating it out loud to someone else”. And that changed it all for me.
Now instead of trying to impress people with my knowledge, or impose my view on them, or whatever it is we are doing in the moment when we want to be heard – I pull back and let them tell me what they think. I try to learn something rather than teach something.
I don’t always agree with them or learn something new, of course, but overall I learn a tremendous lot more listening than when I am just talking.
It’s quite extraordinary how much this simple switch can change your life. You should try it.
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STOP PAYING ATTENTION TO THE NEWS
I used to wake up in the morning to the alarm playing a national radio station. The news would come on and I would start my day by listening to a list of everything shit that had happened in the world in the past few hours or days.
I then brought this cloud with me into the new day.
And I did this for years. Strangely enough, I was finding it harder and harder to be motivated to get up and do stuff. Life seemed grim and I often struggled to find the point of it all.One morning I just couldn’t take it anymore -something snapped inside me and I suddenly realised the full impact news and media was having on me.
I was being presented with a list of terrible things as if it was somehow my fault or responsibility to deal with. 99% of the list was stuff that I had absolutely no say in, and not in a million years could I do anything to help, hinder or otherwise affect the events. All I could do was worry and stress about them – which was helping absolutely no one!
Since then I have not listened to any radio news, or watched any TV news. I blocked most of the news sites from Facebook and I never read newspapers, not even the headlines – ESPECIALLY the headlines!
The Media’s output is designed to keep you in a heightened state or in fear. Avoiding it is Life changing. Try it for a week and see how your outlook changes.
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GIVE UP CAFFEINE
The biggest single thing that I did to positively impact my mental health was to quit Caffeine.
Within days of doing so my baseline fear, anxiety and stress became MASSIVELY reduced. That weird and nagging sense in the back of my mind that something is going to go wrong – vanished! The panic that suddenly came from nowhere – nowhere to be seen!
I cannot stress to you enough how much of a game changer this was for me. More than meditation, more than yoga, more than working out or any exercise, more than any sort of affirmations, magick, pills or potions – giving up caffeine was by far the most effective thing I have ever did to positively impact my mental health, worldview and general well-being.
Try it and see if it is the same for you. If you are like me you will notice the change within days. Besides, decaf is much better tasting these days anyway, and some of the fruit and herbal teas are just delicious.
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And there you go, I hope you get some value out of these ideas, and if you have any good ones of your own please share in the comments section below!
Until next time…
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Arbitrarily taking full responsibility for one’s life is just like accepting punishment for a crime which one didn’t commit. If one is not responsible for the cause of one’s own birth, one is therefore absolved of all subsequent actions and reactions, not to mention also deserving of reparations for having been given life and forced to comply with laws, of which were previously created without consent or proper representation, against one’s will.
Well, this is the whole classic teenager argument of “I didn’t ask to be born!” isn;t it? 🙂
To be fair, I have often used it myself at times, as a way of soothing a burdened mind when things got tough. But ultimately, for me, following this line of though leads me to a less happy life, where I become more bitter, angry, blaming and resentful. It certainly makes me more depressed and useless, than functional. I also have issues with playing the victim and this type of idea just plays right into that game.
I don’t want to be any of these things, so I avoid this idea theses days. I focus on thoughts and ideas that empower me rather than dis-empower me.
Besides, I honestly don’t feel it is helpful to say or believe that because you didn’t ask to be born, you are now free to commit whatever atrocities you want. I think that only leads to more darkness, and sadness, and I feel there is more than enough of that as there is.
I prefer Jordan Peterson’s idea of voluntarily taken on the burden of being born and dealing head on with life. Seems to me like I would end up in a better place in my own head and life doing that, than if I choose to accept yours or a similar proposition.
That said, if this train of thought helps you to feel happier, stronger, more content, or able to deal with the world in a way that works for you and those you interact with, then more power to you.
Thanks for the message, I wish you well!